


Bedside Manners (remix of Bedside Vigil)

by minxy



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1994247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minxy/pseuds/minxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to janedavitt and rydra_wong for the beta. This was originally posted to a remix community remixredux, which is no more. I resuscitated the story from the author's commentary I had on file. If you're interested, that commentary is here: http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/43715.html</p></blockquote>





	Bedside Manners (remix of Bedside Vigil)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hathor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hathor/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Bedside Vigil](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/62643) by Hathor (hathy_col). 
  * Inspired by [Bedside Vigil](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/62643) by Hathor (hathy_col). 
  * Inspired by [Bedside Vigil](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/62643) by Hathor (hathy_col). 



SG-3 could probably tell she was angry by the way her heels clicked curtly down the bare concrete floor and reverberated through the halls, but Janet knew, from years of late nights, every-others, on-call pages and midnight emergencies too numerous to count, that a doctor’s needs should be dwarfed by a patient’s.

An angry doctor made for a nervous patient, made for snapping and cursory attention and unnecessary pain and mistakes. Her anger would cause this, would do harm, and she knew it, even as she mentally drove the spikes of her pumps through the thinly painted arrow on the floor directing her around the corner to her triage infirmary.

Because Janet had buttons, and some of them, once pushed, created an anger that couldn’t be quenched, not even by her not inconsiderable will; had to burn itself out, and that meant dwelling, for the space of a hallway at least, on Colonel O’Neill and his uncanny ability to find her weaknesses within months of working together and yet fail to understand the inherent stupidity of pissing her off when he needed her help.

“I’m not telling you this for my own amusement, Colonel,” she’d said, her voice calm and dangerously controlled. “There is nothing to do now but wait.”

“Doc, all I’m saying is the standard party line won’t cut it.” She knew he could be stubborn, knew he was worried, but now he was heedlessly alienating the one who wielded the needles.

Which was ironic.

And interrupted, as it turned out, by an unscheduled off-world activation announcement followed immediately by a call for a medical team to the gateroom; turned out SG-3, the marine combat unit, had had a run-in with some staff weapon blasts. A fact that Colonel O’Neill had found to be unimportant, resulting in an insult Janet had found to be the last straw.

“Colonel O’Neill.” She’d emphasized her thoughts on the matter by snapping off her gloves. “I’ll thank you not to question my commitment to a patient in my own infirmary when he is stable, apparently recovering, and likely to wake up on his own in a few hours as we have discussed _ad nauseam._ Moreover, and I’ll tell you this for your own safety, questioning my competence is not the way to get on my good side.”

_Pull the palm of one glove to slide the first hand free with a snap, then slip a finger under the cuff of the second glove and flip it inside out to remove gloves without contaminating your hands. Discard in an appropriate biohazard container._

_Walk down the hall, turn right. Try to maintain a professional façade. Don’t continue the argument in your head._

SG-3 were all walking wounded, but she had to stop herself from the dismissal of their injuries as insignificant simply because they were burn wounds and not mysterious bug bites that dropped her people unceremoniously in the middle of the floor during a routine post-mission check up.

Just because it was a known entity didn’t mean it was inconsequential: Johnson’s glancing chest wound may have hit bone; she’d have to remove the dead skin before she could see if his ribs had been scorched, and he’d probably need a skin graft, too, which would take weeks of recovery.

Figures, he said he was fine.

It was the big guys you had to watch out for, she thought; the ones who believed they could handle it, whose trust you had to earn before they would tell you when something felt off. The type who would volunteer to let you study their symbiote but not tell you the kind of pain it caused them until you were hours into your experiments. That kind of patient (she couldn’t tell if it was a trait particular to marines and Jaffa or if it was an individual characteristic) took a lot of talking to, a lot of time: you had to invest some attention in those tough guys so that they understood how much more useful information was than stoicism.

So that they thought to mention it, even if they only made it halfway through a sentence like “Doctor Fraiser, I do not believe—“ before they lose consciousness in your infirmary. Then it’s all guessing at anaphylaxis, trying epinephrine and hoping to God he responds to it. _That’ll teach me to always go for the civilians first,_ she thought while prepping Johnson to move to the burn unit at the topside hospital. _I should institute a new policy that the quiet ones are always first, and that their COs stay the hell out of my way._

She was halfway through the five stitches Makepeace needed in his left hand (it had collided with some Jaffa armor at close range, she was stoically informed) when a nurse interrupted to tell her Teal’c’s brain activity was increasing, and Colonel O’Neill wanted her to know, ‘he looked like he was having pleasant dreams.’

She might have snorted at that, had she not had an open wound in front of her.

“Rough day, Doc?” Makepeace asked her as she ended her intimacy with his subdermal tissues and tied off the last suture. _Grip the needle in the tongs, loop the loose end of the thread around it, pick it up again and tighten to the surface of the skin without pulling._

“Interesting.” She clipped the threads and added some butterfly closures for good measure, even though it was his left hand. This was a marine, after all. “Never a dull moment.” The off-key screech of metal wheels accompanied her pushing off his table to move her little black stool to the next bed and the next marine with battle wounds, but she mustered a smile for the boy worried about his friend as she thought to herself, _yup, this place is always interesting_ , and reassured him that Johnson would be fine.

The remaining members of SG-3 got through their post-op physicals with nothing more pressing than a few second-degree burns needing treatment, but it was still hours before she could make it back to her long-term infirmary to quickly check on Teal’c.

O’Neill stood to attention as she entered, and it occurred to her to say ‘at ease’, but she thought he might as well squirm a little more as not (it’d serve him right), so she held her tongue, although she did let him shadow her to Teal’c’s bedside, walking quietly and picking up the chart hanging off the end of the bed with a practiced arc of her shoulder.

“It’s low, isn’t it? His heart rate?” Daniel asked, looking for all the world like he was younger than the marine she’d just treated.

“Well,” Janet answered him quietly, “his resting heart rate is lower than a human’s, so I can only guess that his sleeping heart rate would be lower still; if it’s possible to say such a thing, it doesn’t appear to be abnormal.”

“Apart from the fact that a Jaffa is sleeping.”

“I’ve spent enough time working with Teal’c to have every faith in his ability to close his eyes for a moment and wake up healed with no help from me.” Which is possibly the most unique doctor-patient relationship of her life, she mused, and possibly the first doctor-Jaffa relationship of its kind ever. She supposed waiting and seeing, guesswork and improvisation were going to be her best techniques when blazing trails like that.

“Doc?” The Colonel asked, then indicated the patient in question with a chin jut. “Looks like Sleeping Beauty is coming out of it.”

“Hey, Teal’c.” Daniel smiled, shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head . Sam jumped off the next bed where she’d been sitting to close ranks. Janet privately thought that particular habit of military teams made her feel claustrophobic; she knew, though, that they wouldn’t hold his hand, wouldn’t try to comfort him after she left the way a child or lover or anyone not on a military base might, or maybe anyone might with a patient other than Teal’c, so she’d allow them all to tower over her in solidarity until they got in her way.

“This could take a minute, Daniel, he might not be ready to speak right away.”

“Doctor Fraiser.” Or not. His voice sounded gravelly. She’d have to check his airway, make sure it wasn’t still swollen from the allergic reaction.

“Teal’c. Feeling better? You gave us a scare.”

“Indeed.”

“Good. Open your mouth for a moment, please?” _Looks fine,_ she diagnosed, _recovering from possibly the first documented allergic reaction ever in a Jaffa._ Skin wasn’t warm, though he closed his eyes for long moments when she pressed her hand over his forehead and temple. _Fatigue._ “Okay, call me if anything feels out of the ordinary, and you all can have a few moments, but then I want Teal’c to kel no’reem if possible. In silence.”

Her mock glare was met with a sheepish grin from Captain Carter, an outright smile from Daniel, and a quiet, ‘Yes, Ma’am,” from Colonel O’Neill at the foot of the bed, which, along with a half smirk, told her he already knew he was forgiven for the earlier comments.

Can’t fault a team for getting antsy about one of their own lying unconscious on a bed, really, and Janet figured that she’d be angrier if they hadn’t shown such concern. She shuffled her way back to the foot of the bed to let Sam see for herself that her teammate was in fact holding his own eyes open, and was marking the time on Teal’c’s chart when he croaked out her name again.

“Yes, Teal’c?” she answered. “Did you need anything?”

“Only to say, that I am most grateful to be alive, Doctor Fraiser.”

She gripped his ankle for a moment, which was all she could reach, really, as she tried to figure out how to answer that kind of comment. “We’re all glad that you’re okay, Teal’c,” she said finally. “Don’t know what we would have done without you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to janedavitt and rydra_wong for the beta. This was originally posted to a remix community remixredux, which is no more. I resuscitated the story from the author's commentary I had on file. If you're interested, that commentary is here: http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/43715.html


End file.
